Reference is made to FIG. 1 which illustrates a prior art process environment 10 in a semiconductor fabrication plant. In general, process environment 10 comprises a processing unit 2, such as a chemical mechanical polisher, at least one load/unload cassette station 4 (two are shown), an integrated metrology tool 6 and a robot 8.
The robot 8 transfers wafers to and from both the processing unit 2 and the cassette stations 4. However, the integrated metrology tool 6 requires its own handling system in order to transfer the wafer to be measured from the robot 8 to a measuring location on tool 6 and vice versa.
FIGS. 2A, 2B, 2C, 2D, 2E and 2F illustrate the operation of tool 6 and robot 8 using a handling system 16 to work with an integrated metrology tool having a measuring unit 15. One exemplary process environment uses the NovaScan 210 integrated metrology tool, commercially available from Nova Measuring Instruments Ltd. of Rehovot, Israel, and its handling system. The handling system 16 is composed of a bent arm 17 connected to a gripper 18. The latter can be any gripper which can hold a wafer. For example, it can be a vacuum gripper.
The arm 17 slides vertically on a vertical rail 14 and reaches above the measuring unit 15 in order to place a new wafer in a measuring position and/or to return a measured wafer to the robot 8. Between the uppermost position of gripper 18 and measuring unit 15 there is a supporting station 19 comprised of two supporting beams 24 and 25, each of which has a supporting base 26. Supporting beams 24 and 25 are connected to a rail 30 by a relative motion unit 32. Unit 32 is designed to provide relative motion to supporting beams 24 and 25 such that they move toward and away from each other, as indicated by arrows 34 and 36. Supporting station 19 is connected to the measuring unit 15 by a solid connector 54.
As shown in FIG. 2B, with supporting beams 24 and 25 in their most separated positions, gripper 18 can freely pass through the buffer station 22, even when loaded with a wafer. As shown in FIG. 2C, with supporting beams 24 and 25 in their closest positions, a wafer can be held on each of supporting base 26 and gripper 18 cannot pass through.
In operation, and as shown in FIG. 2D, the robot 8 arrives at integrated tool 6 loaded with a new wafer W on an arm 9. At this point, handling system 16 is waiting in its uppermost position. Robot 8 places the wafer W on supporting bases 26, after which, as shown in FIG. 2E, handling system 16 moves down and picks up the wafer W. Robot 8 then leaves integrated tool 6 to conduct other missions while handling system 16, loaded with the wafer W, continues down, until, as shown in FIG. 2E, it places the wafer, working surface down, in a measuring position on the measuring unit 15. Typically, the measuring position includes supports which support the wafer on its edges (not shown). Since supporting beams 24 and 25 have moved towards and away from the plane of the paper, the supporting station 19 is shown in FIG. 2F with dashed lines.
It is noted that robot 8 leaves tool 6 empty and must arrive at tool 6 unloaded in order to take back a measured wafer. Thus, robot 8 is not optimally exploited, i.e., a disadvantage considering that the robot 8 is the "bottle neck" in process environment 10 (FIG. 1).
Prior art systems solve this problem in multiple ways. One exemplary robot is the DBM 2400 series of Equipe Technologies, Mountain-View, Calif., USA. This robot has two separate arms. A secondary exemplary robot is the PerMer 6100 robot of Cybeq Systems, Sunnyvale, Calif., USA. The robot can hold two wafers, one on each side of its arm, and rotates the arm 180 degrees in order to switch wafers. For both prior art systems, the robot arrives at the supporting station loaded with a new wafer, and the free arm or side faces the supporting station. The free arm (side) loads a processed wafer from the supporting station, after which, the arm (side) with the new wafer is loaded onto the supporting station. The robot then returns loaded with the processed wafer.
It will be appreciated that these solutions require additional footprint since, during their operation, the two arms (sides) are loaded with both now and processed wafers. This may be a drawback in crowded processing environments.